Hydrated Silica Gel Gemstones & Minerals

The following is a list of Hydrated Silica Gel gems and minerals listed in our database. Click the pictures to get full data, click the X to remove the gem from the list.

Opal

Opal: Opal is hydrated silicon dioxide. It has the same chemical composition as quartz but contains about one-tenth (and sometimes as much as one-third) water. It is never crystalline, but it displays a rich play of colors, or "fire" caused by the internal refraction of light by the array of tiny spheres of amorphous silica which for a compact, three-dimensional network in the mineral. It may be somew (read full)

Phosphophyllite

Phosphophyllite: Phosphophyllite is a very rare mineral, a hydrated zinc iron manganese phosphate with a monoclinic crystal system. It appears as long prismatic or thick tabular crystals. It is colorless to deep bluish-green. Polysynthetic twinned crystals are common. It is semi-hard, light, with excellent prismatic cleavage. Translucent to transparent with vitreous luster. It turns gray and loses water when hea (read full)

Turquoise

Turquoise: Turquoise is a hydrated phosphate of copper and aluminum in the Phosphates, Arsenates, Vanadates group, with a triclinic crystal system. It rarely occurs as prismatic crystals. It is usually found as light-blue or green masses, nodules, and veins, sometimes filling cavities in various rocks. When it occurs as thin strips, it is tighter and brightly-colored at the center, lighter and porous on the (read full)

Howlite

Howlite: Howlite an opaque, massive mineral used for ornamental and utilitarian articles. is a rarity for collectors It has a monoclinic tabular crystal system with a subvitreous luster. The most common occurrence is in the form of a cauliflower. Howlite is found in borate deposits, with most ornamental pieces found from various sites in California (USA) and Mexico. It occurs as opaque white, and may be (read full)

Chalcedony

Chalcedony: Chalcedony is a compact form of silica, composed of microscopic quartz crystals. It is softer than quartz and denser than opal. Its appearance may range from transparent to translucent to opaque. The main types are chalcedony, which is uniformly colored, and agate, which has curved bands or zones of varying color. Varieties include the red to reddish brown, translucent carnelian, the red, opaqu (read full)

Tektites

Tektites: Tektites are glass specimens rich in silica that many believed were actually meteorites. But, the locations in which tektites have been found, and their chemistry, led scientists to suggest that they may not in fact have come from outside planet Earth. Another conjecture is that tektites are formed from rocks that melted after being hit by a meteorite. Tektites actually have a composition not unl (read full)

Carnelian

Carnelian: Carnelian is a variety of chalcedony, which is translucent and is red to reddish-brown. It may also occur as flesh-colored chalcedony, known as cornelian or carnelian. It is slightly similar in appearance to its relation, the dark brown chalcedony, sard. The colour of cornelian is caused by colloidally dispersed hematite. Other reddish chalcedonies may have been colored by heating since if they (read full)

Chrysoprase

Chrysoprase: Chrysoprase is a variety of chalcedony, usually black or leek-green in color. The most highly-prized variation comes in bright-green, apple- or leek-green. It has a waxy lustre. It occurs as mammillary or botryoidal masses. The microscopic quartz fibers have a radial structure. The pigment is nickel. Large broken pieces are often full of fissures with irregular colors. Its color can fade in sun (read full)

Hauyne

Hauyne: Hauyne is a blue feldspathoid rock-forming mineral, one of four members of the sodalite mineral group that is a component of lapis lazuli. The other three are lazurite, sodalite, and nosean. It is a complex mineral of sodium, calcium, aluminum silicate, and sulfate. Hauyne forms very bright and attractive though uncommon transparent blue dodecahedral or pseudo-octahedral crystals of the cubic sy (read full)

Meerschaum

Meerschaum: Meerschaum is a clay-like hydrous magnesium silicate. It has no crystals, and occurs as earthy aggregates, porcellanous masses, nodular, and porous. In the fresh state it is soapy and soft, but hard when dried. It sticks to the tongue and its taste sets the teeth on edge. It is opaque, has flat conchoidal, earthy fracture, and an orthorhombic microcrystalline system. Because of its high porosity (read full)

Rhodonite

Rhodonite: Rhodonite is a silicate of manganese-iron-magnesium, a mineral of the Pyroxene group, with a triclinic crystal system. It appears as rare tabular crystals, sometimes with rounded edges and wrinkled faces. It sometimes occurs as distinct, translucent to semiopaque crystals, but more often it is in compact, granular, ot crystalline masses of a patchy, pink, flesh red or brownish red color, often wi (read full)

Sodalite

Sodalite: Sodalite is a sodium aluminum silicate chloride in the Sodalite group with an isometric crystal system. Its royal blue forms are the best known. As a mineral, it is a principal component of lapis lazuli. It appears very rare as dodecahedrons, crystals with 12 faces, but usually it shows as compact masses, bright blue, white or gray with green tints. It is unsaturated and rarely appears with inclu (read full)

Chrysocolla

Chrysocolla: Chrysocolla is a silicate that forms as stalactitic masses, in radiating groups, or closely-packed aggregates. It appears as green, blue, and blue-green, but can also be brown or black when impurities are present. It may be translucent to nearly opaque, and has a vitreous to earthy lustre. It forms in the oxidation zone of copper deposits, and occurs with azurite, malachite, and cuprite. When d (read full)

Agate Chalcedony

Agate Chalcedony: Agate Chalcedony differs from other Chalcedony in that it often has distinct banding. In fact some slices of Agate may appear to have banding similar to that of tree rings. Due to its porous nature it is often colored (by humans) black, red, green, or blue to further increase its visual appeal. Agate Chalcedony is found in Brazil, China, Germany ,Hungary, Mexico, Uruguay, the United States, and (read full)

Sard

Sard: Sard is the uniformly colored red-brown or brownish-yellow variety of Chalcedony, which in turn is a microcrystalline variety of Quartz. There is no strict separation between sard and cornelian/carnelian (red to reddish brown), because they are both chalcedonies found in the same deposits and were employed for the same objects. The tints of a sard stone may be reddish or orange. Good-quality mat (read full)

Fire Agate

Fire Agate: Fire Agate is a term applied to much of the variety of chalcedony that occurs as botryoidal, consisting of crystals of minute platy inclusion of an iron mineral goethite or limonite minerals over the layers of chalcedony, producing a vivid rainbow containing every color in the spectrum, an iridescent, fire-like appearance, with careful polishing away of the brown outside layers. When polished, it (read full)

Gypsum

Gypsum: Gypsum is the most common sulphate mineral. It is usually the first evaporite mineral to be precipitated form water due to its poor solubility. Varieties include Selenite (or "spectacle stone), which is colorless and transparent; Satin Spar, the fibrous, translucent form with silky luster, which when cut cabochon shows pearly chatoyant effects; Alabaster, used for ornaments, which is firm, fine-gr (read full)

Dioptase

Dioptase: Dioptase is a relatively rare emerald-green mineral, sometimes tinged bluish or blackish. Crystals are small with a vitreous luster, and is transparent to translucent. Its green is very strong and bright even when compared to the more subtle green of emerald. It forms green to blue-green encrustations and fillings of enamel-like or earthy texture. It is uncommon, and found in the weathered zone (read full)

Schorl Tourmaline

Schorl Tourmaline: Schorl is the black, opaque, sodium iron rich variety of Tourmaline, a complex borosilicate with a trigonal crystal system.
Tourmalines usually occur as long, three-sided prisms, which often have well-terminated ends. Sometimes they are found as parallel or radiating groups of long, thin prisms with striated ridges lining its surface. Its varieties span the widest color ranges in the mineral (read full)

Datolite

Datolite: Datolite is a semi rare silicate mineral of the gadolinite group. It appears as surface-growing, short and stubby, prismatic, large crystals. Its crystal structure is monoclinic, as it has two axes of unequal length inclined to each other, with the third lateral axis at a right angle to the plane that contains the other two. Its aggregates are huge, granular, dense, fibrous, and has porcelaneou (read full)

Rubellite Tourmaline

Rubellite Tourmaline: Rubellite is the pink to red variety of Tourmaline, which is a complex borosilicate of aluminum and alkali, with iron, magnesium, and other cations. It is found as fine acicular crystals in rocks, or as large individual crystals grown upon matrix where they may reach a weight of several kilograms. Most form elongated and striated trigonal (three-sided) prisms and these are terminated with trigona (read full)

Scapolite

Scapolite: Scapolite is a mixed crystal series, a complicated sodium calcium aluminum silicate group composed of calcium-rich meionite, and sodium-rich marialite. It appears as yellow, blue, pink, violet, or colorless prismatic crystals with a tetragonal system, mostly surface-growing, with perfect cleavage. These crystals are usually in aggregates that are massive granular, long columnar, dense, with vitr (read full)